patent

Lawsuits within the tech industry is not an uncommon thing, and the past few years we've seen legal battles among and between such big companies like Google, Apple, Samsung, etc. The latest one to join the circus is Microsoft, no stranger to this lawsuit issue of course, and this time, they're going after Japanese OEM Kyocera. They claim that the smartphone maker has infringed on some of their patents and is seeking financial damages but at the same time, hoping to find an amicable solution to the issue.

We're counting the days until the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain. This special event will be a launching pad for the latest mobile devices that are expected to wow us this 2015. One of the highly anticipated smartphones to be released this year is Samsung's next Galaxy flagship phone: the Galaxy S6. Much has been said about this upcoming phone from the South Korean giant and we heard a lot of rumors already.

Early Christmas gift or hell freezing over (again)? Rockstar Consortium (not to be confused with Rockstar, the game developers) and patent clearinghouse RPX have announced an agreement that would transfer ownership of 4,000 patents that the consortium owns over to RPX. And as part of that agreement, Rockstar has agreed to drop all ongoing patent lawsuits against the likes of Samsung, LG, and HTC. Sadly for Google and Cisco, this announcement comes after they've agreed to settle a similar patent squabble with Rockstar last month.

Xiaomi has been hit with a sales and import ban in India. A court in New Delhi has banned sales and imports due to copyright infringement. The case was brought against Xiaomi by Ericsson India and Ericsson says that it has tried to get Xiaomi to license the standard essential patents it is using in its devices.

Although it's almost 3 years since Google Glass was announced (and then sold to "explorers" a year later), it's still too early to say whether it's already a failure or that it will eventually catch on. But a new patent filing from Google shows that they aim to improve the first version, and maybe, just maybe, this will pave the way for more interest in the wearable tech.

Nintendo seems to want to enter the airline industry, as well as, the mobile industry by bringing the Game Boy to airplanes. Nothing is official yet but a patent application was recently spotted: an application to virtualize Game Boy and other consoles and placing then in different devices such as phones and airline entertainment systems. Maybe it’s time for Nintendo to finally and officially go mobile and work on bringing the games to Android or iOS.

Samsung is cooking up something. Of course, that is always the case but any news or clues of an upcoming smartwatch can be exciting. A patent has recently surfaced about a round smartwatch with rotating bezel. It’s still a concept/patent application but the idea is actually interesting.

Samsung and Apple slapping each other with lawsuits isn’t the only big legal matter to watch out for in the tech industry. Samsung has gotten a new enemy in NVIDIA. Last September, NVIDIA filed patent lawsuit infringements agains the South Korean electronics giant and Qualcomm. That was the first time NVIDIA filed a lawsuit on any company after being in the business for 21 years.

South Korean tech giant Samsung reportedly owes Microsoft some money. Samsung is believed to owe the Redmond company a total of $6.9 million in interest. The amount seems small considering Samsung already paid $1 billion last year. However, Microsoft went ahead and sued Samsung again for the unpaid interest.

Rackspace has declared that we are all now free to rotate our smartphones. They announced that they have won their Inter Partes Review (IPR) challenge against "patent troll" Rotatable Technologies over the rotating technology that they were trying to have patented with the US Patent and Trademark Office. Rotatable had previously sued Rackspace over the screen rotation technology, which the former claims they own the patent to.